


The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

by decadent_mousse



Series: We Don't Skip A Beat [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, Heartbeat Kink, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Medical Kink, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:34:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2197146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt is hiding something, and Hermann becomes determined to find out what it is.  It ends up being something very different from what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first heartbeat kink I started working on (and is also the first one in this series, chronologically), but I put it on the back-burner for awhile there. It's finally done, though! 
> 
> Many many thanks to my friends for supporting me and encouraging me, since this fic suffered through many writer's blocks. And extra special thanks to [bravinto](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bravinto), who encouraged me to keep at it at a stage where I was really, really nervous and hesitant about writing heartbeat kink fics at all. <3

Newton was sprawled out on the couch when Hermann entered the lab that morning.  That in and of itself was not especially unusual – it wasn’t uncommon for him to grudgingly settle down for a nap there when exhaustion started to take its toll.  What _was_ unusual, however, was the fact that he wasn’t napping there.  He was fiddling around with what appeared to be a stethoscope, examining the earpieces critically as though they had personally offended him in some way.

“Good morning.”

The other man bolted upright with a start and nearly fell off the couch.  “Hermann!  Uh, hi!”

Hermann stopped in front of the couch and raised an eyebrow.  “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  I’m–“ Newt gestured wildly, “–examining myself.  I mean, I’m– I’m giving myself a… check-up.”

“Yes, but _why_?”

“Uh, well…”

Hermann stood there, his other eyebrow lifting to join the one that was already raised.  After several long moments of silence, he prodded, “…Yes?”

“Well, I went to the infirmary for a physical at the ass-crack of dawn this morning, and they gave me this whole speech about work stress and high blood pressure and a bunch of other stuff that I kind of just zoned out on after awhile because I’d only gotten like an hour of sleep.  Anyway, they wanted me to monitor my heart rate for a couple days, just as a precautionary thing and so– so that’s what I’m doing!”

“I would have thought a heart monitor would be more convenient.”

Newt nodded slowly.  “Yeah, that… would have made a lot more sense.  Probably.  I mean, maybe they’re just short on equipment down there or something.”  He stared at Hermann, still looking a bit wide-eyed and… nervous?

“Newton, is something wrong?”

He jumped up from the couch and rolled his eyes.  “What?  Nah, I should just– I should get back to work.”

~

Newton acted strangely for the rest of the day, and Hermann couldn’t figure out _why_.  He didn’t seem upset, exactly, just… withdrawn.  Hermann wasn’t sure how to approach the situation because he wasn’t really sure what the situation even _was_ , so he spent the day quietly despairing.  An odd tension hung in the laboratory all day long.

At lunch, he reached over and took Newton’s hand.  Given his behavior all day, Hermann had half-expected to be rebuffed, but instead Newt entwined his fingers in his and gave him a bright grin.

“Hey.”

“Are you alright?”

Newton raised an eyebrow.  “What?  Yeah, I’m fine.  Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve been unusually quiet today.”

“You’re complaining about me being quiet?” Newt laughed incredulously.  “Dude, are _you_ alright?”

He gave Hermann’s hand an affectionate squeeze and held onto it loosely as he ate the rest of his macaroni and cheese.  Their lunch date proceeded like normal from there, and Hermann began to wonder if he had just been over-analyzing the situation.  

~

He had nearly put the whole thing out of his mind by the time he finished his work for the day.  Newton had retired to their room an hour earlier, which was a bit unusual, but not unheard of.  Perhaps he simply wasn’t feeling well.  It briefly occurred to him that Newton might be ill – that perhaps he was behaving strangely because he’d received bad news during his medical exam that morning.  If something were wrong though – seriously wrong – Newton would have told him… wouldn’t he?

By the time he stood outside the door to their shared quarters that evening, he was less sure of that and increasingly more concerned that something might be seriously wrong and that Newton was hiding it from him out of some well-intentioned – but horribly ill-conceived – desire to protect him.

Hermann resolved to confront him about it, but not tonight.  In the morning, when they were both better rested and hopefully better able to sort through whatever was going on.

He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and was almost immediately confronted with the sight of Newton lying spread-eagle on the bed with his shirt unbuttoned, one hand down his unzipped pants and other pressing the diaphragm of a stethoscope to his chest.  His face was flushed, his eyes were half-closed, and with the earpieces in his ears he must not have heard the door open.  He didn’t know he was there yet, and Hermann had half a mind to turn around and leave undetected while he still had a chance.

…Then Newt glanced upward.  His eyes opened wide and he froze like a deer caught in headlights.

“U-uh, you’re back early,” he said once he seemed to remember how to use his vocal cords, and his tone was awfully conversational for someone who had a hand down his pants.

“I finished my work earlier than I’d expected.”

Newton was blushing so furiously there wasn’t a single bit of un-inked skin that wasn’t bright red.  “O-oh, good.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt–“

“No, no, it’s okay!” he exclaimed, sitting up straight.  “I just– I wasn’t expecting you to be back for awhile.”  

He seemed to suddenly realize that his hand was still down his pants and pulled it out hurriedly, zipping his pants, and blushing even _harder_ , and Hermann was increasingly confused.  This was hardly the first time he’d caught Newton red-handed – so to speak – and he didn’t usually get so flustered about it.  On the contrary, one time Hermann had caught him and Newt had winked at him and asked him if he wanted to give him a hand, and what was transpiring now was almost the exact opposite of that scenario.

“What exactly are you doing with that?“ Hermann inquired, gesturing at the stethoscope.

“Nothing!  Nothing.  I mean–” Newt laughed nervously, “–I mean, obviously it’s _something_ , but it’s just a… thing.  It’s no big deal.”

“When you say ‘a thing’–“

Newton suddenly seemed reluctant to meet his eyes.  “A– a sexual thing, yeah.”

Realization dawned.  Newton had been acting strangely Hermann had caught him with the stethoscope earlier that day.  A situation he was beginning to suspect had not been as innocent as it had seemed at the time.  “Is this what’s been bothering you all day?”

Newton made a vaguely frustrated noise and shrugged as he began to button his shirt.  “It hasn’t been _bothering_ me, dude.  Or, I guess, yeah, it has been a little bit, but y’know, I just– it’s just… a thing.  It’s something I usually, uh, enjoy on my own, and I’m totally okay with keeping it that way.  I wouldn’t have even messed with it, but I figured I had time…”

Generally speaking Newton was often straight-forward about, well, _everything_ and that usually included his sexual interests as well.  In this case, however, it was clear he’d been actively trying to hide this.  “So you… don’t want me to be involved?”

Newt blinked.  “What?  No!  That’s not what I–  Dude, I don’t _not_ want– I just meant–“  He gave Hermann a helpless, floundering look and eloquently added, “Um.”

Hermann tried again.  “You… felt as though you couldn’t trust me?”

“No!  That’s not it!  It’s just– we’ve had a really great thing going.  We’ve– we’ve been good, you’ve been good, and I didn’t want to mess it up over something that doesn’t even really matter that much, y’know?  It’s _really_ not important.”

“Newton, of course it’s important.  Why on earth would you think that it wasn’t?”  He was having a hard time accepting this.  Not Newton’s interest, but the fact that he’d felt the need to hide it from him.

The other man seemed to misinterpret his tone, because his expression sort of crumpled in on itself for a moment.  “Uh, look, really, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t want things to get weird.  It’s a thing I can take of myself, it doesn’t _have_ to involve you, I just–“

Hermann sighed and walked over to the bed to sit.  The other man looked ready to bolt, so he took gently took his hand and patted it reassuringly.  “That’s not what I meant.  If it’s important to you, then it’s important to me.  You didn’t have to hide this.”

Newton sighed and looked a bit sheepish.

“This morning–“

“Look,” Newt interrupted, “I know what you’re going to say and I just want you to know that it wasn’t bullshit.  Well, it wasn’t _completely_ bullshit.  I _did_ have a physical this morning, but they didn’t tell me to keep an eye on anything, it’s just… by the time I left I was so–  Dude, do you know how hard it is to hide a boner when you’re sitting in a doctor’s office?”

Hermann gave him an amused look.  “No, not particularly.”

“Well, it’s not easy.  Also, kinda awkward.”

Hermann wasn’t exactly sure that he understood, but clearly this was something that mattered to Newton, and that was all he needed to know for it to matter to him.  On the grand list of sexual interests it didn’t strike him as _that_ peculiar.  It certainly wasn’t something worth going to such extreme lengths to conceal.

“You do realize,” Hermann said softly, lightly rubbing the back of Newton’s hand, “you could have just told me about your interests from the beginning.  It would have saved you a lot of heartache.”

“Pfft, heartache,” Newton snorted.  “Really? You’re going to bombard me with heart puns now?”

“Possibly,” he replied with a smile.  He leaned in and kissed Newt softly.  “What would you like me to do?”

"J-just," Newton stammered, "the stuff you – we – usually do, only let me, umm..."  He waved the stethoscope wordlessly, cheeks flushed and eyes bright.

Hermann nodded.  “Perhaps we could lie down?”

“Yeah!  Yeah, okay.”

Hermann set his cane to the side and leaned back on the bed.  Newt didn’t so much lie down beside him as plop down beside him, bouncing slightly on the mattress.  

Newt slid the earpieces of the stethoscope into his ears with a grin and reached under Hermann’s sweater, hands roaming across his skin.  The diaphragm of the stethoscope was still warm from where it had laid against Newton’s skin earlier, but he still shivered at the touch.  It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation – simply one he was unfamiliar with experiencing in this particular… setting.

“God, Hermann,” Newt breathed, voice trembling slightly.  His face was still rather red, but with his erection was visibly straining against his jeans, Hermann suspected it was no longer the result of embarrassment.

His heart thudded against his ribs and Newton scooted closer, breath hot against his skin.  With his free hand, he unbuttoned and unzipped Hermann’s trousers, though not without a bit of fumbling.  Hermann gasped softly as Newton wrapped his fingers around his cock, and Newt pressed his face into Hermann’s shoulder, muffling a moan that sent a shiver down Hermann’s spine.

Newt groaned, “Here.”  He briefly let go of the stethoscope and took one of Hermann’s hands and pressed it against his chest.  “I really, really need to get another stethoscope,” he said.  “That way next time we won’t have to swap back and forth constantly.  I mean, if– if there _is_ a next time.  If you want.  I mean, if not, y’know, it’s cool, I won’t–“

“I would like that.”

Newton blinked at him with such a look of genuine surprise that it gave Hermann the slightly irrational urge to find whoever might have made him feel ashamed of his interest in the past and give them a stern talking to.  “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Newt grinned at him, and his heart thumped enthusiastically against Hermann’s palm, hard enough that he could see his chest jump a little with each beat.  Hermann kept his hand there when Newton let go and placed the end of the stethoscope against his chest again.  He had almost forgotten one of Newt’s hands was down his pants until he felt fingertips tease across the length of his growing erection.  

Hermann fumbled around blindly with his free hand, fingers eventually find the tube of lubricant Newton had been using earlier.

“Let me, dude,” Newt breathed.  “Here, hold this for a second.”

He reluctantly removed his hand from Newton’s chest to hold the diaphragm of the stethoscope in place against his own.  Newton’s fingers lingered over his for a few moments before picking up the lubricant.  Newt’s fingers were warm and slick as they lightly stroked him.  Hermann drew in a sharp breath, heart hammering against his ribs.  

Newt listened with keen interest, eyes dark with lust.  “You sound incredible, dude,” he breathed.

“Do I?”

“Mmm.”

“Here, listen.”  Newton pulled the earpieces out of his ears and swiveled them around, moving to gently place them in Hermann’s ears –   “I promise I don’t have ear cooties.”

“Newton, we’ve been sharing the same bed for the better part of a year, I’m well past the point of worrying that you might have ‘cooties’ of any kind.”  

The sound of his own heartbeat filled his ears.  It was an interesting – albeit slightly disconcerting – experience.  He had a vague memory of playing with a stethoscope as a child once or twice, but that had been under very, very different circumstances.

Newt was watching him like he was the center of his universe, and it made the blood rush to Hermann’s cheeks – and other areas.

“Neat, huh?”

Hermann thought about the sensation of Newton’s heart beating fiercely against the palm of his hand earlier.  “I’d much rather listen to yours,” he said, placing the diaphragm of the stethoscope against the other man’s chest.  

Newt flushed an even more impressive shade of red than he’d previously been.  “That’s– that’s really great, dude, I love that a lot, but, uh… you’re about two inches to the left of where my heart actually is.”

“Ah.”

Newton’s laughter vibrated in his ears and sent a shiver down his spine.  “It’s okay.”  He gently laid his hand over Hermann’s and guided it a little bit to the right.  “Better?”  

What had, a moment before, been a soft thumping was suddenly very loud.  “Yes,” he replied, and could barely hear himself speak.

He leaned forward and lightly kissed Newton’s chest, just off to the side of where the stethoscope was pressed against it.  Newton’s heart noticeably picked up speed.  He took that as a sign that he was on the right track and traced the lines of his tattoos with his mouth.  

The other man moaned, softly at first then louder when Hermann reached into his jeans – which he’d apparently done a rather poor job of zipping up earlier.  

“God, Hermann, you’re killing me.”  The heartbeat thundering in Hermann’s ears seemed to indicate otherwise.  

Hermann wanted to follow Newt’s tattoos further down, but the stethoscope wasn’t going to stretch that far, and even if it could it would have been difficult with their hands down each other’s pants.  Instead he worked his way upward, kissing a trail up his chest and neck.  

Newton let out a shuddering breath, one hand tightening convulsively around Hermann’s wrist and the other stroking faster and more erratically.  Hermann brushed his fingertips across Newt’s hip before traveling further down.  Newt’s heart _leapt_ – audibly – and hammered harder and faster.

Hermann pulled his face away from Newton’s neck to look at him.  “Is that _normal_?”

“Dude, you have your _hand_ down my _pants_.  It’s normal – it’s a totally normal reaction.  It happens every time.”  He grinned.  “You just don’t usually _hear_ it.  C’mere.”  He let go of Hermann’s wrist to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him closer, nuzzling his face affectionately.

Hermann took him in hand and after that the conversation gave way to heated kisses and touches.  Newton’s heart rate soared and the breath shook in his lungs, and Hermann had to admit that hearing it – knowing _he_ was the one having this effect on him – added a certain something to the experience.  The other man didn’t last much longer at that point, and Hermann wasn’t far behind him.  

They clung to each other for awhile afterward, chests heaving.  Newton reached up and plucked the earpieces out of Hermann’s ears and tossed the stethoscope over his shoulder.

Newton must have noticed his questioning look because he laughed and said, “It can handle getting rolled over on.  I’m too tired to put it away.  You wore me out, man.”  

He was still panting a bit as he curled against Hermann, laying his head on his chest.  It was something he did often after they made love – and looking back on it now, Hermann suspected he knew why.

“Can you promise me something?” Hermann asked softly, gently carding his fingers through Newton’s hair.  

Newt made a sleepy noise.  “Mmm?”

“The next time you find yourself wanting to explore something sexually, please just tell me.  Don’t feel as though you have to keep things from me.  I want you to be happy.”

“Deal.”

He kissed the top of Newton’s head.  “Good.”

They laid there for a few minutes in silence, and Hermann was starting to drift off when the other man sleepily mumbled, “Does that go both ways?  Because I’m really curious about those ropes I found in the bottom of your sock drawer last week.”

“Er.”


End file.
